December 2011
BY NSPE PRESIDENT CHRISTOPHER M. STONE, P.E., F.NSPE
One way NSPE is different from technical societies is that technical societies promote your technical skills and abilities. NSPE, however, protects the professional engineer's right to practice, largely via advocacy. Part of NSPE's advocacy mission is to educate the media, prospective and current clients, the general public, members and non-members, and especially elected officials about the important role PEs play in protecting human and environmental health, safety, and welfare.
At NSPE's Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, seven focus groups from the NSPE House of Delegates met to begin to address the key areas of Licensure, Ethics, Advocacy, Diversity, Education, Recruitment, and Sustainability (LEADERS). The Advocacy focus group identified three priorities as NSPE looks ahead to develop the 2020 Transformation Plan: 1) Raising the visibility of professional engineers, 2) Enhancing the image of the professional engineer, and 3) Becoming the voice of the professional engineer.
Almost daily, elected officials introduce legislation in Washington, D.C., that directly impacts the PE's ability to practice and how engineering businesses can operate. As examples, in collaboration with other national engineering societies, NSPE has partnered to repeal Form 1099 tax reporting requirements, repeal a 3% withholding of all payments to engineering firms and other vendors as tax, uphold qualifications-based selection, and enact Good Samaritan legislation.
The main issue at hand, however, is that legislation impacting our profession can be introduced, debated, and either enacted or killed whether we as PEs participate in the discussion or not. But by not participating and informing our legislators about what PEs contribute, we are allowing non-PEs to dictate the future of our profession and how it will be practiced.
The Legislative and Government Affairs Committee has established NSPE's primary public policy agenda for 2011–12. Based on committee discussions and a recent survey of members, NSPE will focus on energy; STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education; infrastructure improvement; critical infrastructure and homeland security; and licensure. The agenda will also focus on protecting qualifications-based selection and enacting Good Samaritan protection for professional engineers.
The L&GA Committee is actively working in these areas. For example, the committee's energy task force is drafting a position statement focusing on the functional role of professional engineers in energy and also revising a position statement "Oil Energy in the U.S." to reflect NSPE's belief that PEs should be required to have direct supervision over the engineering design, operations, and maintenance of offshore oil rigs.
Other committee task forces are drafting a position statement on the role of STEM education in creating future generations of professional engineers as well as working with state society executives to determine how NSPE can become a clearinghouse for state legislative and regulatory information. Enabling government relations information to flow between states would be valuable to both state society executives and members, and it would help NSPE identify public policy trends across the country.
Members can keep up with the latest federal policy issues, as well as state trends, in the "PE Report" section of PE. These issues and trends are also tracked and addressed in detail at www.nspe.org/issuesandadvocacy. Additionally, NSPE's Online Legislative Action Center features alerts that help members be prepared to continually advocate to elected officials on issues of interest to the profession.
In these and many other ways, NSPE is working to be the voice of professional engineers in guiding and positively impacting public policy.
While NSPE is doing its part, every member and nonmember professional engineer has a role to play when it comes to advocacy. PEs should consider running for and holding elected office at all levels. Short of that, PEs should routinely lead grassroots outreach with current elected representatives to help educate them about the professional engineers' role in protecting the public health, safety, and welfare.
Recently, I represented NSPE at the American Council of Engineering Companies' winter meeting in Las Vegas, where R. Forbes Guthrie, of Stewart Environmental Consultants, presented a program on the inextricable relationship of water and energy. Guthrie said, "A stable energy policy is one of the best things we could do to solve not just our energy issues but also our water crisis." He begs engineers to find ways to clearly articulate cause and effect, and to educate and meet with politicians.
I think Guthrie is on to something. If professional engineers don't advocate for things they know best about—like infrastructure—who will? The answer may go a long way to explain why we are where we are. It may also go a long way to explain how we can do better to get where we want to be as an association (and a country), going forward.
Get comfortable talking to your local politician or legislator. Tell them proudly that you are a "professional engineer," then go on to explain the difference. Until everyone from elected officials to the general public knows who we are and what we do, we may never be able to fully impact the legislation that affects our profession.
